0000000000174650
AUTHOR
Qaisar Shafi
showing 5 related works from this author
From hybrid to quadratic inflation with high-scale supersymmetry breaking
2014
Motivated by the reported discovery of inflationary gravity waves by the BICEP2 experiment, we propose an inflationary scenario in supergravity, based on the standard superpotential used in hybrid inflation. The new model yields a tensor-to-scalar ratio r ~ 0.14 and scalar spectral index ns ~ 0.964, corresponding to quadratic (chaotic) inflation. The important new ingredients are the high-scale, (1.6-10) x 10^13 GeV, soft supersymmetry breaking mass for the gauge singlet inflaton field and a shift symmetry imposed on the K\"ahler potential. The end of inflation is accompanied, as in the earlier hybrid inflation models, by the breaking of a gauge symmetry at (1.2-7.1) x 10^16 GeV, comparable…
Upper bound on the tensor-to-scalar ratio in GUT-scale supersymmetric hybrid inflation
2014
We explore the upper bound on the tensor-to-scalar ratio r in supersymmetric (F-term) hybrid inflation models with the gauge symmetry breaking scale set equal to the value 2.86⋅1016 GeV2.86⋅1016 GeV, as dictated by the unification of the MSSM gauge couplings. We employ a unique renormalizable superpotential and a quasi-canonical Kähler potential, and the scalar spectral index nsns is required to lie within the two-sigma interval from the central value found by the Planck satellite. In a sizable region of the parameter space the potential along the inflationary trajectory is a monotonically increasing function of the inflaton, and for this case, r≲2.9⋅10−4r≲2.9⋅10−4, while the spectral index…
Gravity waves from non-minimal quadratic inflation
2015
We discuss non-minimal quadratic inflation in supersymmetric (SUSY) and non-SUSY models which entails a linear coupling of the inflaton to gravity. Imposing a lower bound on the parameter cR, involved in the coupling between the inflaton and the Ricci scalar curvature, inflation can be attained even for subplanckian values of the inflaton while the corresponding effective theory respects the perturbative unitarity up to the Planck scale. Working in the non-SUSY context we also consider radiative corrections to the inflationary potential due to a possible coupling of the inflaton to bosons or fermions. We find ranges of the parameters, depending mildly on the renormalization scale, with adju…
Inflation and majoron dark matter in the neutrino seesaw mechanism
2014
We propose that inflation and dark matter have a common origin, connected to the neutrino mass generation scheme. As a model we consider spontaneous breaking of global lepton number within the seesaw mechanism. We show that it provides an acceptable inflationary scenario consistent with the recent cosmic microwave background B-mode observation by the BICEP2 experiment. The scheme may also account for the baryon asymmetry of the Universe through leptogenesis for reasonable parameter choices.
Spontaneous Breaking of Lepton Number and Cosmological Domain Wall Problem
2019
We show that if global lepton number symmetry is spontaneously broken in a post inflation epoch, then it can lead to the formation of cosmological domain walls. This happens in the well-known "Majoron paradigm" for neutrino mass generation. We propose some realistic examples which allow spontaneous lepton number breaking to be safe from such domain walls.